A Website Dedicated to Northrop Frye

Frye on Democracy 6

Here’s a quote on democracy as anarchism, which, unfortunately is not cross-referenced in the index, so it has not, up until now, been included in our earlier compilation, Frye on anarchism. To discover it now, however, is like unearthing treasure.

Democracy is anarchistic in the sense that it is an attempt to destroy the state by replacing it with an expanding federation of communities, a federation which reaches its limit only in a worldwide federation. (“The Analogy of Democracy,” CW 4, 271)